Joyner's Bank

The underwater sand bar, exposed at low tide, which extends outward into the Atlantic from the northeastern corner of Hilton Head, has long been designated Joyner Bank in honor of Sea Captain John Joiner who died March 9, 1796 at his plantation near Beaufort. He had moved to Carolina from Frederica, Georgia in 1750 and was in command of a scout boat from 1754 until the boats were no longer necessary at which time he became a planter. St. Helena’s Parish Register records that his wife Phebe (from England) died of ‘poison’ in July 1754 and that he married in January 1755 Anne, daughter of Captain Richard and Anne Wigg; she predeceased him by two days. Although he had several sons and daughters, he left only one grandchild, John Joyner Smith, by a daughter Margaret who married Archibold Smith in 1789 and died in 1795. John Joyner Smith married in 1813 Mary Gibbes Barnwell, eldest daughter of Col. Edward Barnwell, and built a magnificent home on the bay which remains one of Beaufort’s treasurers; they died childless. A map drawn by James Cook in 1766 notes that it was “approved by Mr. Joiner (sic), twenty years a pilot in that place”.